


"As we stand in this foreign land, you're holding my no longer foreign hand."

by TheSoundOfHerWings



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, a bit of angst I suppose?? maybe??, implied rape, not graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-16 11:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoundOfHerWings/pseuds/TheSoundOfHerWings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for one of my dearest friends at her request, with the title as the prompt.</p><p>People connect in the strangest of ways. Be it the minuscule bumping of shoulders on the street, or a kiss stolen in an alley, hell, even a romance that is strictly more business than love. Human beings have a habit of desiring affection and connection that, more often than not, will tear them apart. But that doesn't stop them from wanting it - nor does it stop the tiny moments of bliss that somehow seem to sneak up on them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Öd und leer das Meer (Dull and Empty Is The Sea).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IndyMiller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndyMiller/gifts).



> This is part 1/16 and features the Moran twins at the ripe age of fourteen, with a healthy dose of angst. Possible trigger warning applicable. I don't really know what I'm doing with this; it'll be a long and convoluted story with many characters and they'll overlap with each other.

“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.  
…  
I think we are in rats’ alley  
Where the dead men lost their bones.  
The wind under the door.  
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”  
Nothing again nothing.  
-The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 

_Sebastian hears the whimpering first. The slow shakes of pained breath are the first vestiges of sound that break through his tired ears. He tries to ignore it, but it gnaws him away. He tries to cover his ears, but there are limbs trapped around him. He pushes at the arms wrapped around his leg. Needs to get them off. Needs to sleep. Won’t feel the scrapes against his skin as the nails are dug in - as the hands are dragged away. He won’t remember this until he wakes up tomorrow and his brother is -._

_He feels the blackness pressing in on him - waiting for him to relax his muscles so it can pounce. For some reason, though he tells his brain to send the signals to his muscles, he can’t relax. Not with the pressing and the prodding. There is something keeping him from going back to sleep, and he wants it to go away._

_He strikes out with his hand to push it away. Anything to make it go away. But the face he expects to find clinging to him isn’t there._

_He can still hear the short moans coming from far away, now. They get softer each time they arrive. He tries to wonder if it’s because whoever is making the noise is getting further away or because the person is losing volume. Dying. Fading out. He can’t narrow down the possibilities._

_There is only one person it sounds like. One person it could be that could make those noises sound so painfully beautiful and he wants to cry out, to pull him closer. If only they still shared a bed._

_Which is why he thinks that it can’t possibly be Severin calling for him, clinging to him. They stopped sharing a room when they were twelve and their mother walked in on them comparing erections and freaked out because it “wasn’t right.” So it can’t be his body that lies next to his because Severin wouldn’t be in here unless he walked through the door and Sebastian definitely would have heard that. It would have woken him, right? It’s not Severin. It can’t be. It must be someone else. Maybe their father, who had begun to look at them oddly the more he drank as they shuffled off to their respective bedrooms. Sebastian smiles in his sleep as a particularly loud cry punctuates the stilled air around him._

_That would be nice, he thinks. If his father was making those noises. Revenge for all the times that he had struck his little brother in front of Sebastian._

_He can hear scuffling, now. Just in the other room, he slowly figures out. The one that lies adjacent to his bedroom, but it’s muffled. Part of him can’t remember whether the walls that separate them are thin or thick and he hopes that they are thick because the cries are muffled and one of two possibilities remain. Either the wall is thick, and they just can’t get through. Or the mouth of the tortured is pressed into something that quiets it. It won’t be until tomorrow that he remembers that the walls are thin._

_Sebastian learns how to shut it out. He wishes Severin where there. Though his brother is younger, albeit by only about 37 minutes, he finds comfort in his adolescent chest when he presses himself into him sometimes after their parents have gone to bed, too drunk to be woken up by the movement from room to room. The other’s breathing always helps to provide an adequate soundtrack and those are really the only nights he sleeps without dreams or hauntings. He almost has a mind to go and find his brother. To press into his neck and inhale the comforting scent of him so that he can forget about the uneasy feelings the noises give him._  
But he won’t. He’ll stay here like a good boy because if he wakes Severin, the other boy  
might start to feel jumpy too. He doesn’t want his brother to feel unsafe. He’ll let him sleep and tomorrow maybe he won’t even say a thing. He doesn’t want to concern his brother. He doesn’t need to know. Sebastian’s main goal in life is to protect his younger brother. 

_It won’t be the first time he has to learn how to accommodate, but Sebastian eventually drifts off to sleep. He imagines later that he feels someone pressed up against him, but when he purrs and moves to wrap his arms around the phantom, it starts and slips away. He lets it. He knows that his mind likes to play tricks on him. The crying that he hears must be fake. He’ll block it out. He’ll let the form slip away from his grip and though he finds it strange, the whole incident, by morning he’ll pretend as if it never happened, because part of him knows the whole night never should have happened._

 

 

Sebastian has always been a heavy sleeper. He lays: on his stomach, limbs stretched across any available space on the mattress, head tilted out to face the right side, mouth hanging open; big growling snores, itching his nose mindlessly against the warm cotton of the pillow; he lays like a dead man. 

The only one that can pull the groggy fourteen-year old from his sleep without rendering him homicidal is his brother. Severin has this way about him that calms Sebastian. He has inquisitive eyes that will always make a person feel as if what they’re saying is the most important thing he’s ever heard. He has a mouth that cups his words perfectly at the bottom. It’s so deliciously round that Sebastian wants to swipe his thumb across the sweat that gathers underneath it. Sebastian wants to claim that mouth as his and yes, he’s well aware that there are two ways he can want to claim it. He wants both.

But regardless of his brother’s angelic features, Sebastian doesn’t wake up unless it’s Severin that’s prodding him awake and Sev knows that the only way his brother will be up before three in the afternoon is if he does the waking. So when Sebastian feels the afternoon light blinding his face and he slowly ascends to consciousness, without the comforting feeling of a body against his, he knows something’s wrong. 

It takes him about a half of a second to bound out of bed and another to pull at least semi-clean pants on and then another three seconds to stumble out into the hall. He’s almost forgotten about his dream at this point, so the fact that there is blood on the pristine wallpaper frightens him. He feels his own blood seeping out from his face and he’s cold - goosebumps rising on every surface of his skin. There is something in the back of his mind that is telling him something is wrong. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks, the words not actually making it to his mouth as he stumbles into his brother’s room.

His knees hit the carpet in his frenzied exhaustion but he stops dead, his eyes glazing over the form of Severin huddled against the wall. His arms are wrapped around his knees and the poor boy is trying so hard to keep his arse suspended from the ground.

Sebastian remembers the whimpering, both in the beginning and the end and only now can he detect the faint differences - the second time more defeated, full of agony and he hates himself for not waking up fully. He should have been there, he should have pulled Severin close the first time and refused to let him go, but he hadn’t. He’d needed his fucking beauty sleep. 

He tries to crawl toward Severin, but the fear that erupts in his brother’s eyes is enough to stop him and he feels his eyes begin to water. He wants to say so much. He wants to say I love you and I’m an idiot and I’ll make this right but they’ve never been good with words. They’ve always contented themselves with gestures like a kiss on the cheek, or lately the lips, or a hand in the other. Now Sebastian is powerless to do anything - panting on his knees in front of his brother, begging for forgiveness. 

“I - I’ll make this righ’,” he stutters, to which Severin looks away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I will. I’ll - Don’ you worry, Sev. I’ll ma’e tha’ bastard pay,” he mumbles, knowing there only could have been one person to hurt his brother this badly. Sebastian is quick to his feet and almost misses the flinch from his brother and the tear running down his face. He wishes that he had missed it completely.

It’s 3:15 PM, the Irish sun swimming through the dust to reach them and Sebastian knows where his father will be. Conveniently, he also knows that his father’s room is right next to his own, as the memories from the night start to come back. He stumbles out into the garden, after stopping once in the kitchen to gather what he needs - the dullest knife he can find. The bastard will pay. Sebastian has never failed to protect his brother. He would tear the world open to keep him safe, and that’s exactly what he plans to do. 

The sun blinds him as he stumbles out of the screen door into the garden that the Moran family has perfected. Winding rows of every flower imaginable, and in one, a drunken dead man walking. The grass on his bare feet feel as if they’re cradling him and holding his tired body up. He refuses to rest until his father has paid for this.

They’ve never been close, he and his father. Even though Sebastian is the favoured one of the two boys, his father has never been overly nice to either brother. He sees them as lazy gits - as boys that will never become men.

Sebastian wonders what his father would say a man has to do to come of age. Does he have to grow five inches and talk three octaves down? Does he have to become fluent in Latin and Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, his own bullshit theories? Will Sebastian have to ascend to his father’s level of idiocy for him to look with pride and admiration on his son’s sunburnt forehead? Or is there something completely different to coming of age, he wonders?

He and his brother are fourteen years old. Tender and gentle humans just starting to traverse the Earth. Does his manhood start when his innocence ends? Is there a correlation between the unhappiness that most adults experience and the naivete of his youthful eyes? If he clutched the knife in his hand for his whole life - his eyes bloodthirsty with steel - would he be a man? A coward? 

But. If he were the ascend the path in front of him, and find his father’s heart. Beating slow and slovenly like a dead plum. But. If he removed the aching, rotting fruit from Father’s stone chest in the name of his brother, sweet vengeance wetting his lips so they didn’t crack or falter. If he were to carve out Severin’s name in his sacrifice, spill blood in love and fill his fingertips with howling, sweet, justice -.

He would be a man. He would grow six inches. He would walk and talk deep - his secret a stone in his belly, grounding him to the mud and dirt and the reality of manhood. 

He sees his father sitting, singing, the scent of whiskey overtaking the flowers. If he were versed in the ways of poetry, if he had grown up in flowery or harsh words instead of clasping a steel knife in his palm, he would find some ironic laughter in his father’s breath polluting the innocence of the garden. He sees his father swinging forward from his hips, as if his belly is on hinges and he can remember his biology studies. See the charts. The heart can be reached through the back if he finds the right spot, pressing, pushing, slips, muffles his father’s mouth...

 

 

When Sebastian stumbles back into his brother’s room, after he’s dropped the knife into the river and watched it flow out of reach of the guilt clawing his heart, floating by the pure ecstasy in his chest that exists all around it, he drops his blood stained clothes and pulls on pants of Severin’s from the dresser, resolving not to look at him. To give him time. Let him come on his own. 

He feels the whimper in the back of his neck first, pressed like a secret into his pores, so small and lonely - a burden only meant for Sebastian himself to share with his other half. The next thing that he senses is the rustling of arms moving and the solid pressure of them around his waist. Then a forehead pressed to his shoulder blades. It is the stance of utter surrender, and Sebastian stays very still so as to protect the fragility of Severin’s trust. 

“He’s gone,” he whispers. His voice is already turned heavier, deeper. Sebastian closes his eyes. The weight presses down - smothers him between his father’s phantom and Severin’s innocence. As long as he is an umbrella shadow over Severin to keep him safe, Sebastian is more than fine with his brother staying innocent enough for the both of them.


	2. Keeping Our Metaphysics Warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim Moriarty has bad headaches and calls in dear brother to help. A lot of fluff and a tiny bit of angst, I suppose, if you empathise with Jimmy's headaches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem is "Whispers of Immortality" by T.S Eliot.

“Fix it,” comes the moan as Richard steps into their shared room. He looks around until his eyes land on the form buried under a red duvet, eyes peeking out - flinching from the light and almost seeming to hiss as Richard shakes the rain from his hair. 

Jim gets headaches. Earth-shaking, bone-stretching, devouring headaches. It is the only time the older brother ever needs help. Or the only time he will admit to needing help. Richard steps in and sits gently on the end of the bed and feels Jim shift toward him. It isn’t hard to reach out and sink into Jim’s hair to blow softly above his ear. 

“Jimmy,” he coos. More movement and Jim has laid his head in Richard’s lap. 

“Fix it,” in a softer tone.

“Mm,” Richard hums, pressing his hands into Jim’s scalp and letting his fingers trail along the little bumps to make patterns. “How do you want me to fix it this time?” There is a pregnant pause in the room. There have been multiple ways Richard has pulled Jim out of one of his moods. He bakes, sometimes, in the university kitchen as Jim lays on the floor, growling at anyone who comes in and taking the offered spoons dripping with batter from Richie into his mouth as if he hasn’t eaten in days. Richard will turn off the lights and slip into bed with his brother, and give him a knife. Jim will drag it along the other’s stomach. A ritual of sorts, as Richard talks to him, trying not to sound his flinch when the knife presses in too hard during a particularly painful throb of Jim’s brain. He will make pot after pot of chai tea to fill their room with the spices, purchased directly from India. Richard is subject to his brother’s whims, and what Jimmy asks for, Richard is only too happy to oblige him with. 

“Webster,” Jim murmurs and Richard nods. His hands never leave his brother as he rearranges them so he is sprawled horizontally in the bed, his brother’s nose is pressed into his belly button. The air settles around them as Richard closes his eyes to breathe in. He can feel Jim start to breathe with him as he speaks. His words circle the two of them: Richard swinging his feet that hang off the bed to lull Jim into the soft movement. He can feel his brother clench his eyes, and Richard’s fingers work to smooth the wrinkles out, as he focuses on just the words, letting the meaning sink in, stamping out all the other thoughts that never seem to leave him until Richard has to step in and he ends up: limp, languid, spilling across his brother’s lap like a dead man, left to suffer the burning embered-ruins of his mind metropolis.

_“Webster was much possessed by death_  
 _And saw the skull beneath the skin;_  
 _And breastless creatures under ground_  
 _Leaned backward with a lipless grin._

_Daffodil bulbs instead of balls_  
 _Stared from the sockets of the eyes!_  
 _He knew that thought clings round dead limbs_  
 _Tightening its lusts and luxuries._

_Donne, I suppose, was such another_  
 _Who found no substitute for sense,_  
 _To seize and clutch and penetrate;_  
 _Expert beyond experience,_

_He knew the anguish of the marrow_  
 _The ague of the skeleton;_  
 _No contact possible to flesh_  
 _Allayed the fever of the bone._

_Grishkin is nice: her Russian eyes_  
 _Is underlined for emphasis;_  
 _Uncorseted, her friendly bust_  
 _Gives promise of pneumatic bliss._

_The couched Brazilian jaguar_  
 _Compels the scampering marmoset_  
 _With subtle effluence of cat;_  
 _Grishkin has a maisonette;_

_The sleek Brazilian jaguar_  
 _Does not in its arboreal gloom_  
 _Distil so rank a feline smell_  
 _As Grishkin in a drawing-room._

_And even the Abstract Entities_  
 _Circumambulate her charm;_  
 _But our lot crawls between dry ribs_  
 _To keep our metaphysics warm.”_

By the time Richard is done, Jim’s breathing has slowed to a crawl. It isn’t the crawl of a drunkard after the bar has kicked him out of the only safe place he’s ever found. It is the crawl of an infant. Discovering that their legs are appendages that can do more than look chubby and taste good. It is the crawl of a newborn newly born into a world of reprieve. It is the man finding out he is no longer paralysed, now mobile, now safe, now -. 

Richard lets his fingers trail out of Jim’s precious skin and into the bed where they lay, resting, like his eyes, now closed. He feels Jim laugh softly as he moves up Richard’s body to lay his head in the crook of his neck, snaking an arm around his waist. 

“Looks like that might have helped you more than me, precious,” he purrs. His voice has a hint of fatigue in it, in the slurring of his words, so minuscule that only Richard would ever notice.

Richard hums in return. He can feel Jim’s smile into his neck, jumps and swats at him when he feels teeth digging in. Jim relents, for once, with a put upon sigh and contents himself with tracing Richard’s body as he watches him sleep. After all, the throbbing pain is gone. He can spare a few minutes to let his brother rest.


	3. Steady Hands; Raging Pulse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian's not a man that tries hard to go out of his way for other people, but there's something about Molly Hooper that reminds him too much of his brother to pass up when she's clearly in need of some comfort.

_“He took a step and then felt tired -_  
 _he said "I'll rest a little while."_  
 _But when he tried to walk again, he wasn't a child._  
 _And all the people hurried fast - real fast,_  
 _and no one ever smiled.”_  
 _-Blue Lips, Regina Spektor._

_Steady_ , Sebastian huffs. If he doesn’t remind himself, he’ll most likely be sent to jail for the things - or people - he punches. The tiles on the wall are so mind numbingly the same that they deserve to be crushed to pieces - much like the sniveling scum around him at all hours of the day. He doesn’t even hear the fucking crying at first. It reaches his ears in waves of whimpering concealed in part by the knuckles of a hand. It’s a recognisable sound. On the top of his things-I-have-to-do-before-I-can-next-drink list, some idiot moaning about their cuntassed life when he’s trying to get to class isn't even top-50 featured. In fact, he’s never had a particular inclination for this sort of nerve-grating thing. Choking someone to death would make it stop; preferably himself.

These thoughts go unnoticed now after almost three years. The delicious burden of whispers of violence and death, and how utterly fan-fucking-tastic it tasted to slide the knife into his father's pink flesh, soft and pliant under his fingertips, make their origin pretty damn clear. It's nothing new that, after every lecture, the mental image of the school pool filled with the combined quarts of blood from every teacher makes his hands itch. Nothing new that he would follow them. Either slit his throat and float on top of the water while it slowly swallowed him or dive in with weights attached to his chest. _Raging._ Sebastian smirks. 

The sniffling grates louder as he passes the girls' loo; there’s a medium height brunette - nice arse - leaning against the door. Of course it'd be a fucking twat - probably on about some lad. Most every time an annoying girl cries, there's some smug cock behind her - and not in the good way. But before he can yank her around by her thin hair and _make_ her shut the bloody fuck up, she's looking at him with red eyes and an expression he recognises. Molly Hooper. In his memory, those eyes see the ground more than they see any whiteboard, so why she's even a top student is a mystery to him. 

Do words have cores? Or are they empty like everything else? 

If 'lonely' has a core, Molly Hooper lives there. 

Sebastian loves a man with those eyes - the kind that follow the action silently. People with those eyes are the observers - the quiet ones that realise their place in the fucking wanker of a universe is one of steadiness and silent strength. A pretty face, a weak smile, and underdeveloped breasts will be her rumoured legacy if she dies tonight. The bell rings. _Should be in class. Shouldn't have killed me father._ Win some, lose some. _Lose all._

“Hullo,” he says instead of hurrying down the hallway to his waiting chemistry room.

Molly lowers her eyes at his greeting. If he were suddenly put in the spotlight and asked why he is stopping, he’d stutter - even if the reward for answering was a marlboro red. 

“Why’s a pretty lass like you crying?” He can bet by the jerk of her chin that the only person that’s ever called her pretty is grandma - and while he would laugh at anyone who looked so surprised at a word in passing, she looks like Severin when Sebastian tells him everything’s gonna be alright. Maybe it’s the optimism his brother doesn’t expect that makes Sev’s eyes furrow like that; maybe it’s the softness they’ve both forgotten is there underneath Sebastian’s hard skin.

She shrugs. She never talks s’far as he knows, but to fix anything, he needs an answer. Her shoulders are rolled back in a wary stance - like she expects an attack. Because of him or because that’s all she gets? 

“Molly, yeah?” he tries again. Meek nod.

Anything “soft” in him has long been buried under steel and nails. He pinches his brow sometimes, tries to look for it but if it’s there, the gentleness that he was born with, it’s in the form of a dusty film settling over places in his mind that he hasn’t visited since he was fourteen. .It’ll glint in certain lights, his brother being one of them, but try to close a hand around any single piece and they flit away. He may be scared of human contact. He may be built out of the steel that burned his father to the ground. He may have it in his heart to lap up the blood of the deranged, himself included, while crouched in the dirt. But Molly seems to hold his flimsy dust up to the windows; she’s sunlight. 

Brother best is the moon. Anyone who doesn’t glimmer in his presence is a bigger piece of shite than Sebastian - and that accomplishment deserves a prize - if it can be reached. Maybe Molly has her own monsters but feeling the brightness she has left, the damp Sebastian want to flinch away - crawl back into the dark and continue lapping at his veins. Her hair shines at the end like he could touch it and be burned. Steady. He’s not thinking about the shitfuckload of mental killing he’ll do when they yell at him for skipping again. She reminds him of Severin. Without uttering a word, she can make someone feel like their existence hasn’t gone unnoticed; Sebastian is pathetic enough to both notice that and chase it. If this is what sun feels light, he might lose his love for being nocturnal. 

“S’wrong?” he mumbles.

“T-t-they took my b-bag and threw it in t-t-he boys’ l-l-oo,” Stronger than her inflamed button nose might suggest, her voice shocks him. Sebastian once had a cat that resembled her when it tried to learn how to hiss. Now would be a really bad time to smile and thank fuck he’s good at ignoring urges.

“One mo’, kitten.” The nickname drops complacently from his lips. “Don’t tear anything up while I’m gone.” The urge to choke those fuckers is back. _Steady hands, raging pulse._ Molly has never harmed anyone, has nothing to give but a sweet smile, and in that smile, she’s begging. Pleading, she throws herself to the ground at the feet of idiots who don’t spare her a second glance, step upon her back and imprint their shoes upon her spine. The smiles’ve gained weight, courtesy of all of the people that have turned her away. Sebastian has seen a look so desperate once in his life before and it seared the insides of his eyelids. Never leaving him, he and the image sleep together, as if an inescapable solution.

Molly’s smile is like Severin’s eyes. She begs. Someone has to oblige.  
He retrieves her bag, slinging the leather strap over his shoulders. She’s waiting for him, arms wrapped around her torso tightly when he returns. Her eyes are less red, and her smile wavers underneath all the weight of being unwanted. How would she look polished, the rust of her insecurities falling always until she stands without shaking, speaks without trembling? _Raging._

**…**

It’s technically not his fault if he’s able to sneak out of the shit sixth-form school they attend. Mum thought moving them to England would leave the drunken-arse phantom of his father behind. _Not a fucking chance._ The gaunt form, dressed impeccably in his primordial waistcoat and slacks, riding boots to his knees - usually an illegal cigar hanging between his lips - is still as alive as it was in the moment between being stabbed and actually dying. The last time Sebastian has been able to think without Augustus tainting his thoughts? Can’t remember. Nor can he recall pre-Augustus-fucking-up-his-life trivialities: the unfamiliar jovial quality that his laugh used to have; a smile that showed more than just after first good inhale of a fag. Over the images that plague him at night, in the morning, in church - of the blood running down his arm and mixing cordially with the beads of sweat being pulled out of his skin - he would take normal again, boring as it is. He has night terrors. He is utterly tainted. His taste for violence can’t be attributed to psychological damage and instead, adheres to the simple rule that it’s enjoyable. He killed his father to make his brother safe again, but now? Now he hunts it. He craves his fingers knuckle-deep in someone’s esophagus.He loathes himself for it, recognising himself for utterly deranged beast that he is. And yet people like Molly Hooper still have the power to reduce him to using nicknames such as _kitten._

...

He’s got a map in his mind of the neighborhood. Street lamps, telephone cables, telephone boxes, the odd still-standing police box - all are landmarks that house his demons. He almost debates which ‘home’ he should lead her to, except that if he told her he lived at the third street lamp on the right - Hackney Rd. - she’d have him institutionalised. Maybe he should be. Every monument owns enough of him to press his Adam’s apple back into his throat and invert it. Maybe that’s where his need to kill and destroy comes from. Raging pulse. To have one moment of reprieve, he must wrap his own hands around another beating throat and call that place home for a while.

She’s barely smiling now, but it’s enough that the crying has stopped. Steady hands. Neolithic apes blunder and infest the planet, yet. She has enough of Severin in her. Her skin - porcelain in the way that it is tough to scratch, yet so easy to shatter - makes him want to have soft hands to touch her with.

He leads her in the house, apologising for the mess. Mum’s sewing fabric lies everywhere - another of her ridiculous hobbies. As does Severin’s books. No sign that Sebastian lives here. _It’s cozy,_ Molly says. _Warm; I love it._ Sebastian blushes a little and almost offers to show her his room, but no. Steady hands. While he would love the run his hands down the sides of her torso and make her quiver - falling forward onto his shoulder to beg him to slip inside of her - the idea of tainting this with unnecessary petting gives him the metallic taste of an unsatisfactory kill. Not right now. Not just yet. Raging pulse. Instead, he tromps to the kitchen, muddy boots discarded at the door, and puts the kettle on.

Instead, he inhales the steeping tiger eye assam and watches her climb the stairs alone to find warner clothes that she can rest in. _“Second door to the right. First dresser’s mine.”_ Instead, he lets the tiger eye (calming the pouncing cat within him. Steady) steep to exactly four minutes, shuts his phone off after first sending a text to Severin - _at home with a friend, she’s nice. come join us later._ \- and pours it exactly to the top of the cup for him, raw, and leaves a little for her in case she wants milk or a sugar cube, or hell, even fifteen cubes of sugar. Instead, he hangs his head as he rests against the counter and when she returns - three cubes of sugar and a generous fuckload of milk. She looks delicious in his clothes - half-ready to fall off. He strokes her. Her face - cheeks. _Raging. Pulse._

The best thing he can find on the telly is one of those silly vampire shows, but she snuggles right down onto him, eyes latching to the fake blood - obvious, a wound there would produce something darker - and the overly sexualised men. But she likes it, maybe she even needs it. He needs it - this. The comfort of having someone close that you don’t constantly make plans to murder in your head. He sips his mug. _Shoulda added a shot of brandy._

“You’re sad,” she says to him, after a comfortable pause. Sad isn’t the word he’d use. _Not a chance._ And although it’s a strange way to start a conversation, he’ll bite.

“What’re you talking ‘bout, kitten?” he slurs, caught somewhere between sleep and semi-consciousness. 

“The way you look at people, at things. I’ve noticed.” Sebastian cracks an eyelid. “Always ready for a fight. Like there’s a constant need to fight against something. Is it to stop the sadness?” Jarred, he shifts her so she’s laying on her stomach, on his stomach. _Steady._

“I suppose it is. Though it’s more madness than sadness, lass,” he snickers and she frowns. He blinks - anticipated to be a very normal blink, just like all the others, uneventful - but when his eyes close, her soft lips press to his parted ones. He’d wanted to polish her, but she’s dusting him off and holding his flecks to the sunlight. They burn, but it’s the kind of burning he could get used to. _Raging._

“Sometimes being sad is okay,” she mumbles, eyes closed, when she pulls away. “But sometimes it’ll destroy you.” He smirks for a moment, tucking her head under his chin. 

“Aye, that it will, kitten.” _Steady hands._


End file.
